31
WordPress as your digital home Chris Hardie @ChrisHardie chrishardie.com
About Me
• 17 years running a web dev agency
• Lead on VIP Team at Automattic
• We’re hiring! automattic.com/work-with-us/
• Personal blog digital home at chrishardie.com
Have you seen this?
P.O.S.S.E.
• Publish (on your) Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere
• Post things on your site
• Syndicate to third parties
• Permashortlinks back to the original
Why?
Ownership
• Do you really want to read and follow the “Terms of Service” for every service you use?
• Everything starts in one place, you control the terms of distribution
• If a third party service goes away, no significant loss
Discovery and Search
• Linking
• Searching
• Categorizing
Customization
• Control the design of the site
• Control the publishing experience
Why WordPress?• Focused on content ownership
• Tons of existing integrations, mostly using open standards
• Plugin architecture supports adding emerging services and destinations
• Great tools for importing and exporting
• Lots of hosting options
Why WordPress?
Why Not?• Platform treatment of native content vs. linked
content
• Distributed stats
• Increased time investment
• P.E.S.O.S. (Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate to Own Site) alternative?
Get Started
Domain Name
• Root of your digital existence, pick it to last even through life changes
• $10-15/year, go for multiple years
• http://www.namemesh.com/
• Protect it and renew it!
Email• Don’t use [email protected], [email protected], etc.
as primary
• If you change ISPs, or if free email services go crazy, protect yourself
• Many domain providers will include email
• Fastmail.com is a great low-cost, ad-free option
WordPress
• WordPress.com: easiest, fastest option to get going
• Self-hosted WordPress.org site: more control and customization options
• Can always switch, export, move
Publicize
• Connect your site to other places you want to publish
• Choose which destinations to push out to for each post
• Supports multiple connections to the same service under different accounts
Publicize• Jetpack brings same features
to self-hosted sites
• Featured images are handled intelligently. (Make sure you validate for Twitter cards.)
• Works with scheduled posts!
• With lots of services, use publicize_checkbox_default filter to turn off auto-selecting
Related Plugins
• Publicize With Hashtags: tags become hashtags
• NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster
• SEO Plugins like Yoast, All in One, etc.
• Facebook Instant Articles and Google AMP
Monitoring
• If it’s your digital home, make sure it’s open for business
• Jetpack Monitor
• uptimerobot.com
Updates and Security• Out of date or insecure sites/themes/plugins can
be a big liability
• On WordPress.com, security/upgrades are handled
• Jetpack Manage helps with self-hosted sites
• Practice good security hygiene in general - password manager, 2FA, encryption, backups, etc.
Promote and Practice• Make sure your social profiles all link back
• Feature it on printed media
• Experiment with originating EVERY SINGLE POST on your site. Tweets, photos, audio, video, everything.
• Help improve the tools: docs, issue reports, posts about your experience, write new plugins, etc.
